Walking on Wool

East Bay Open Studios
The Loom
2150 Livingston St.
Oakland
June 1 & 2, 2024

In demonstration of the wool she uses in her work, Meghan Shimek stood atop one of the pieces-in-progress on the floor of her studio, inviting me to do the same.

What artist asks someone to tread on their creation?! It was meant to show me the material’s springy, resilient properties.

Shimek’s understanding of the medium she works in and its capabilities for of a piece with a vision that caught my eye immediately. She is one of eight resident artists atThe Loom, plus five guest artists who were present for this year’s East Bay Open Studios. Call me a pessimist, but the artists’ many ways of seeing were much more colorful, playful and hopeful than I’d expected.

Located in Oakland’s East Peralta neighborhood, The Loom is a surprisingly beautiful, sun-filled space in a brick warehouse on Livingston Street off 22nd Avenue. Its well-preserved wooden floors and expansive steel-framed casement windows create a bright and vibrant interior. In fact, the late spring sunshine made some of the studios rather hot. (But then, as someone who grew up in the Bay Area, I’d overdressed in expectation of our ever-unpredictable weather.)

Shimek told me more about the felted wool she uses, which is sourced from a women’s collective in Nepal and arrives undyed. She dyes the wool using natural pigments and creates her “furrier” pieces by brushing them out using a huge, wide-toothed comb. I assumed it was a special comb made for just such a purpose — she showed it to me — but apparently, it’s simply a big comb for human hair.

Agustín Maes Combed-out with a big comb.

For other pieces, Shimek soaks the wool in a bathtub, then puts it in a dryer so it bulks-up and takes on a particular density. Hence the piece she demonstrated by walking on it. Learning about her creative process was fascinating, as was the fact that her sculptural pieces have also been created as clothing and, in one instance, costumes for a dancer during a 2016 residency in Paris.

Also fascinating was the Chute Studio printmaking space, the collaborative Risograph studio of Amy Burek and Zach Clark. Burek, a reserved personality who exuded a deep coolness, had displayed works that were instantly intriguing by the obvious care and precision that went into making them.

Among the works was a series of booklets called “Dodeca Meters,” a year-long publishing project which features 12 booklets by 12 photographers, each one in a single color using Risograph printing. They’re lovely in their elegant simplicity. I was particularly taken with Encounters by Makenzie Goodman. It possessed a dark, eerie, almost disturbing vibe.

Agustín Maes "Cottonwood Prism" by Anna Rotty and "Encounters" by Makenzie Goodman, two of the titles in Chute Studios' Dodeca Meters series.

After wandering through the other spaces at The Loom—some large, others small to mid-sized, and one a cramped upstairs loft with low ceilings — I stepped into a studio shared by Carolynn Haydu and Fernanda Martinez.

Haydu works in paper. Some of her work looked something like three-dimensional topographic maps. But not in a classical trompe-l’œil way. Their paper textures are flatly visual until one’s eye adjusts to the layers that make-up the odd and beautiful color combinations. Mesmerizing.

Using part of a stack of gigantic, thick painted paper sheets, Haydu mimicked how she lays them down flat and paints them on both sides, one side entirely and the other lightly. The sheets stick to one another and stiffen. She then uses scissors to sculpt them into shapes that are arranged atop one another. I was surprised she didn’t use a mini orbital sander or similar tool to smooth the shapes. “I’m a Luddite when it comes to technology,” she said. I was all the more impressed that her works’ textures were made using such a simple method.

Agustín Maes The studio shared by Carolynn Haydu and Fernanda Martinez.

Martinez’s work was just as colorful: acrylic and oil pastels on canvas. Their compositions were organic-looking but geometrically ordered. I imagined them as large-scale murals. As it turns out, Martinez has indeed created murals on the exterior and interior walls of places like Arthaus Jack London Square, International Boulevard in East Oakland, and Pomella Restaurant, as well as several other locales in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

The colors, configurations, and patterns of the art on display at The Loom evinced an optimism that was unexpected and heartening. Things are bright at that creative hub in more ways than one. I heartily recommend a visit the next time it’s open to the public. And hey, you might even get to walk on art!